Download Ethnic Studies 260 - UCSD`s Ethnic Studies

Transnationalism and Borderlands
Ethnic Studies 260
Spring 2006
Roberto Alvarez
SSB 223
[email protected] .
534-1739
This is an advanced graduate seminar designed to explore the concepts of transnationalism and
borderlands as they relate to globalism. The primary concern here is how local and regional
communities and people engage and respond to transnationalism. Our objective is to interrogate
state/nation-state processes in globalization. How does transnational capital work at the ground
level and in what ways are nation and state hierarchies part of this global process?
Transnationalism involves the interlocution of people, state power and hierarchy, and the literal
crossing of national boundaries. Borders and borderlands are of paramount importance, but the
emphasis in this class are not literal geo-political borders (e.g. the U.S.-Mexico Border), nor the
crossing of national borders. Rather, our focus includes the creation of new social and cultural
borders and borderlands that result from current global phenomenon. The fundamental questions
we will explore are: What is Transnationalism and how does this process relate to current
hierarchies of power, knowledge and identity? How is the nation state transnational? How do we
identify newly emergent borders and borderlands? How do people and institutions at local levels
engage the global-transnational process? How do these processes affect the manifestation of
culture, power, ethnicity (identity) and race? And, why is this significant? Although the class
will cover the primary social science definitions of transnationalism, our purpose is to seek the
underlying meanings of global process and new interpretations of both transnationalism and
borderlands.
Requirements for the Course: This is a seminar in which reading and discussion are the basis
of our exploration. All participants are expected to be prepared each class period to discuss the
assigned readings. Each of you have a specific interests—geographical, cultural and
theoretical—that I expect will be utilized and contributed in the class discussions.
Course Assignments:
1) Reading response papers. For each week=s assigned reading, class participants will write a
response paper not to exceed two pages (double-spaced with one inch margins). These
assignments are to be handed in at the end of each class on the day that reading is scheduled for
discussion. .
2) Term Paper. You are responsible for a term paper of about 10 pages in length on any topic
that is pertinent to the class. My expectation is that papers incorporate class discussions and
readings, and focus on specific examples of transnationalism/borderlands drawn from your own
interests, research and questions. The paper is due on the final week of class BFriday June 6
1
Schedule of Classes
April 4- Introduction
April 11- Reading assignment: Nations Unbound.
April 18- Reading assignment Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalism
April 25- Reading assignment Tangled Routes:
May 2- Reading assignment: The Death of Ramon Gonzales
May 9- Open Discussion/Research Updates
May 16- Reading Assignment: Global Networks: Linked Cities (Selected chapters)
May 23- Reading Assignment: The Anthropology of the State (selected chapters)
May 30- Reading Assignment Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connections
:
June 6- Summary
no reading assignment. Final paper due.
Required Texts:
1. Basch, Linda, Nina Glick Schiller and Cristina Szanton Blanc
1994 Nations Unbound. Gordon and Breach .
2. Appadurai, Arjun
1998 Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalism.
U Minnesota Press.
3. Sharma, Aradhama and Akhil Gupta
2006 The Anthropology of the State. Blackwell
4. Barndt, Deborah
2002 Tangled Routes: Women, Work and Globalization on the Tomato Trail.
Rowman and Littlefield.
5. Wright, Angus
2005 The Death of Ramon Gonzales: The Modern Agricultural Dilemma
U Texas Press.
6. Ana Tsing
2004 Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connections. Princeton University Press.
7. Sassen, Sakia
2002 Global Networks: Linked Cities . Routledge.
2
Required articles (to be placed on reserve).
Alvarez, Robert R.
1995 The Mexican-US Border: the Making of an Anthropology of Borderlands Annual
Review of Anthropology 24:447-70. Winter .
2001 Beyond the Border: Nation State Encroachment, NAFTA, and Offshore Control in the
U.S. Mexican Mango Industry@. Human Organization. Vol. 60, No.2, 121-127.
2006 The Transnational State and Empire: US Certification in the Mexican Mango and
Persian Lime Industries. Human Organization. Vol.65, No.1, Spring 2006
Alvarez R. And George A. Collier
1994 (with George Collier)The Long Haul in Mexican Trucking: Traversing the Borderlands
of the North and South. American Ethnologist 21 (3) 606-627.
Bestor, Theodore C.
2001 Supply Side Sushi: Commodity, Market and the Global City. American Anthropologist
103(1):76-95
Flynn, Donna K.
1997 We are the Border! Identity, Exchange and the State Along te Benin-Nigeria Border.
American Ethnologist 24(2):311-330.
Kearney, Michael
1995 The Local and the Global: The Anthropology of Globalization and Transnationalism.
Annual Review of Anthropology 1995.24:547-65.
Winichakal, Thongchai
1996 Maps and The Formation of the Geo-Body of Siam. In Stein Tonneson and Hans Antlov,
eds. Asian Forms of the Nation. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon. PP. 67-92.
3